The Irresistible Mr Wrong

by Jeremy Scott

  Of course, to her it feels like love. Crushes do, and seventeen-year-olds are seldom analytical or self-aware. But her reason for marrying him is traditional, even primal, for it has applied since pre-history – to escape from home. ‘I was infatuated by now, and also wild to leave my prison, to run like hell from father, an instinct that was to propel me all my life.’

  And Rubi? He is twenty-three, fit and bold. For a macho Latin stud to roll over and acquiesce to an arranged marriage is the response of a man lacking balls. And Rubi has these, and the apparatus that comes with them will receive further attention in this book, indeed will form a leitmotif to the narrative. But neither Rubi’s tackle nor male pride rears up in protest at this takeover of his life. Complaisantly, he goes along with the plan. He is confident of his own worth and what he is bringing to the wedding feast.

  For him, marriage to Flor poses no dilemma. His nature is that of a gambler, a chancer. He will become known as a unscrupulous gigolo but in one sense he remains a romantic until the end. He believes instinctively that if he seizes the present the future will provide room-service and a fairy godmother pick up the tab – and this will remain so all his life. For him this marriage is no sort of choice.

  Rubi, who will spend his entire life among the privileged and well-heeled, will remark later that Trujillo is the only really rich person he has ever known, ‘He owns a whole country.’ In the republic the Great Benefactor is the source of all wealth, all power, all patronage, and blithely Rubi steps forward with his bride to drink at the toxic font. The dowry he receives for saying ‘I will’ includes the distinction of a public identity: he is appointed Secretary to the Dominican Legation in London, their passport to liberty. The couple is given $50,000, a house in the grounds of the presidential mansion and a Buick convertible with chauffeur and their entwined initials embellished in gold leaf on the door.

  On 2 December 1932 Flor marries the first of her nine husbands and Rubi secures his starter heiress, the first of five wives. So, together and in love, they climb into the Buick and set off for the world stage and the roles they believe life owes them…

  CHAPTER 2

  FLOR TRUJILLO, DOMINICAN

  REPUBLIC, 1932–37

  The crowd of gaudily over-dressed wedding guests applauds as Flor and Rubi drive off from the mansion, high on hope and delusive liberty. They have defied the Benefactor and survived, the world lies open before them … but first there is the matter of sex to resolve. Flor has to be deflowered.

  Her bridal night is spent in their new house in the grounds of the presidential mansion that Trujillo has given them. There her mother is waiting to greet the couple with a bottle of chilled champagne, for she has not been allowed to attend the ceremony, ‘A ritual she was to follow after so many of my marriages,’ Flor will recall thirty years and seven husbands later. But that is a remark made by a woman a great deal more worldly and cynical than the teenager she is today.

  Sexually she is wholly inexperienced, innocent even of heavy petting. The sophisticated brat pack she’d known in France had been experimentally wanton in their ways but she’d been constrained by her Catholic upbringing and the value her provincial culture set upon virginity. ‘You must realise that Latin girls are as jealously guarded from young men as the women of any Moorish harem,’ she explains. Whereas Rubi has extensive acquaintance with sex; he claims to have enjoyed his first encounter aged thirteen. He is skilled in the arts of love, and he’s not about to take her by force.

  Flor has been told about the mechanics of the deed, school friends breathlessly have confided its details. And shortly before the wedding in a scene of tortuous embarrassment she’d been formally instructed in the act by Dona Bienvenida, her stepmother. Only the knowledge that she’d soon be clear of this insufferable parental custody enabled her to endure it.

  So Flor is theoretically prepared for what is in store, but later that evening when, dressed in a pink negligee, she is waiting for Rubi beneath a tent of mosquito netting and he returns from the shower and drops his towel, for the first time she sees it…

  Much has been said and written of Rubi’s organ, and by many. In the 1960s the giant pepper grinders flourished by Italian waiters were known as ‘Rubirosas’. A broad female clientele have testified to the awesome reality. Its reputation will firm up into legend and later wives will comment on that particular consistency, neither soft nor hard, along with other aspects … but now it is the sight alone that causes Flor to shriek, leap out the bed and race in terror for the door. She makes it into the passage with Rubi in pursuit. ‘I ran all around the house while he chased me,’ she recalls.

  He grabs her, attempts to calm her without success. There is no rape, nor penetration that night. He is neither a cruel nor brutal man in lovemaking unless the moment calls for either. But eventually the ritual act of consummation has to take place, though it is a messy, painful business. ‘I didn’t like it because I bled so much, and my clothes were ruined. In time, he began to make love to me in different ways, but when it was over my insides hurt a lot. He was such a handsome boy and so charming that I let him do whatever he wanted. But he took so long to ejaculate that by the end I was a little bored.’

  The morning after, Trujillo strolls across the green carpet of the Bahama grass of the mansion’s well-watered grounds to inspect his protégés and wish the young couple well. He glances around their new home, pleased by what he sees. Expansively he informs them that today they may settle in and organise the staff but in future they will have lunch with him and Dona Bienvenida at the mansion. ‘And Flor,’ he adds as he leaves them, ‘my son Ramfis is going to visit you.’

  She is aware that her father has a mistress and that a young half-brother, Rafael Jnr, exists, but it was never discussed openly. ‘I had learned well that, in Trujillo’s Republic, when you knew something you knew nothing, absolutely.’ Next day a car drives up with three maids, a chauffeur and a soldier minder. A nurse emerges, carrying a little boy of three in ringlets, wearing red velvet shorts and a French-lace collar. With him comes a gift from his mother, a box jammed with silver, marquise-cut diamond jewellery and lingerie with Paris labels. Flor takes her little brother in her arms, he screams and kicks with fury. ‘For years he was to resent my very being,’ she explains.

  This wilful, precocious infant, who is treated with such deference by his attendants, is a monster in embryo – the tyrant’s first-born son who stands to inherit the sceptre and the isle. From the start Rubi is more successful with the boy than Flor, laying down the foundation to a bond that will become vital to him in the years to come, ultimately his very lifeline. Though Rubi has little love for infant children he possesses a sure instinct for expedience.

  The couple had received numerous wedding gifts. ‘They jammed a whole room,’ Flor says. Very many people sought to ingratiate themselves with her father, an even greater number to remain in his fickle favour. Presents included watches, silver, ‘rings without count’ and a $10,000 pair of earrings for the bride. And from Trujillo the house, the Buick, the $50,000 dowry. Of them all, the gift the two prize most is the promise of Rubi’s posting to the embassy in London, their passport to an international milieu both long to re-enter, now with improved credentials and their own status within it.

  In the days stretching into weeks following the wedding no further mention of that appointment is made by Trujillo. In sharp disappointment they come to realise that prize has been withdrawn. Marriage he has permitted; their liberty and independence he cannot condone.

  But meanwhile the living is easy. Theirs is a comfortable wooden house with trellised verandah and slatted jalousies shading its windows from the harsh blaze of the sun. It has its own swimming pool and comes equipped with the latest American devices including gramophone and radio. There is a housekeeper and cook; Flor has two personal maids who see to everything and pick up after her; Rubi a valet, masseur and boxing coach. One room is fitted out as a gymnasium and ring for himself and Kid Gogo, the Dominican
champion, now his sparring partner and resident pugilist. The mulatto prize fighter doubles as their minder, accompanying them if they go out at night. Not that there is anywhere to go. Trujillo’s plans to transform the place into a fashionable resort are still but a dream and, despite work on the drains, air quality in the capital remains execrable – though when the trade winds are blowing the odour is only intermittently detectable further up the mountain, where the young couple live.

  The occasional whiff is a small price to pay, as life for the pair of them has become the greatest fun. They’ve suddenly acquired a visible independence together with the toys of modern luxury. Both relish the experience for its novelty. They’re like kids dressing up and playing at being adults, and with it they’re in love.

  ‘Rubi took to the easy life and so did I,’ says Flor. His nominal occupation as Undersecretary in the Foreign Office carries no responsibilities and requires no skills except a pleasing manner with foreign dignitaries and potential investors in the island. He and Flor are capable in the role, it comes easily to them. There is a steady stream of entrepreneurs looking for opportunity, but most visitors are from the republic’s patron, creditor and master, the United States. These men – they are always men – have to be looked after, seated by someone articulate at dinner, cultivated, schmoozed. Trujillo’s own social skills are rudimentary, he’s wholly lacking in charm, and at times resentfully aware of his deficiency. His court, the cabal of cronies surrounding him, are little more than thugs with dolled-up wives incapable of anything but Spanish. Style, elegance, sophistication, conversation are at a premium on the island.

  This period, the Great Depression of the 1930s following the Wall Street Crash, is the worst of times for Trujillo to attempt to realise his grandiose fantasy of creating a luxury resort. Not only is he facing political opposition at home, which he quells by infiltration and brute force, but acute financial crisis. The country is massively in debt to the US and the treasury is empty. Franklin Roosevelt, the President, sends his lawyer fixer Joseph E. Davies to sort out its chaotic finances.

  Trujillo’s meetings of this nature invariably are conducted one-to-one; he trusts nobody with key secrets. But unusually Flor and Rubi are present on this occasion when the matter is discussed over dinner at the mansion. And rather than pleading as a supplicant against further financial sanctions, Trujillo’s message to Davies is unambiguous: Get the US Government off my back.

  Flor watches as in the course of that evening Davies is converted from critic to supporter, won over so effectually that he returns to Washington not only extolling Trujillo’s leadership but recommending that the US grant a moratorium on the republic’s debt. ‘Father had a genius for imposing his will on others,’ Flor says. Davies was not the first, though to date the most influential, of those friends in high places the dictator acquired to his cause. He assembled one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington which at the climax of his rule in the 1960s was costing $6 million annually (around $50 million today). This sum devoted to sanitising the public image of his tyranny was exceeded only by the price of what would become the most extensive spy system in the Western hemisphere. By 1961 the network required $8 million to run, and it was estimated that one in five of the population (of three million people) was a paid informer.

  For Flor and Rubi, playing house is a frolic. For exercise they go riding or swim. They sunbathe by the pool while served with long cool drinks. Neither of them is a great reader but they scan American magazines and Vogue. The latest fashions haven’t reached here yet – not that the tiny minority of women who might afford them could begin to carry them off.

  There’s not much in the way of company. Only occasionally are there international guests to dinner at the presidential mansion, when drinks and wine are available, proper food is served and there’s some attempt at civilisation. Every day the couple are obliged to eat there and usually it is just with Trujillo and Bienvenida. Only plain fare is on offer: rice and beans, no drink, no cigarettes, no small talk. ‘A bit like two slaves dining with the master,’ Flor describes it.

  Rubi’s job involves no actual work. He rides, plays polo, gambles, cruises bars, and is casually unfaithful with other women. Flor is upset and furious but this is standard Latin behaviour and he is unrepentant. Her sophistication is only a veneer, she’s still a teenager with ideals, boiling passions and jealousies, hormonally erupting and every bit as Latin as he. There are rows and stand-up fights. She goes at him and once he whacks her back. Hysterical, in tears, she flings herself into the Buick and drives to the Palace, bursting into a meeting to tell her father of the outrage.

  Next day Rubi is summoned into his presence. Ensconced behind his enormous desk, eyes shrouded by dark glasses, the dictator presents a figure of considerable menace. He is terrifying in his rages, capable of having a man maimed or killed for some perceived affront, but Rubi knows that to show fear is fatal. Unapologetic, he readily admits to striking Flor – she had abused him like a fishwife, behaved in an unladylike manner and failed to respect him in his own home. So yes, he’d smacked her one.

  There is much Trujillo detests about Rubi, those same elements in him that he envies: looks, cool, education, charm. He’s chafed by the rivalry of the old bull for the new stud in the field. But there is also much they share: Catholicism, pride, machismo, attitude to women. For both, dominance in the home is an unquestioned stance. Trujillo has no respect for Rubi, he has no respect for anyone who works for him, he belittles and humiliates all around him. He’s aware his son-in-law is a drinker, a gambler, a lightweight. He knows he cheats on Flor – all his movements are reported to him – but Rubi’s whoring is as standard and mundane as his own; he’d have been more jealous had the couple been faithful and happy together. He knows, both know, that to slap an unruly wife is necessary at times. It’s the natural order of things, he’s slapped his own. There is no penalty.

  None of the landowning class or self-styled aristocracy cares for Trujillo, though like everyone else they are afraid of him. They consider him a jumped-up peasant. He has dealt with their condescension by recruiting their first-born sons into his Presidential Guard, effectively bringing their parents into line. After Flor’s marriage many of Rubi’s relatives receive government appointments. Like a traditional godfather the dictator looks after family and his aged mother is sacred to him. Every evening after a promenade along the waterfront accompanied by twenty or so of his generals, he calls on her between 6.30 and 7, then visits his mistress and son before going home for dinner with Bienvenida at 10 p.m.

  Bienvenida’s family have been favoured by Trujillo, her brother has been awarded the coveted post of ambassador, heading up the Dominican embassy in London. Now, at one of those stilted lunches at the mansion in the torpid heat of afternoon, Trujillo breaks silence to announce that she is shortly leaving on vacation to visit him, then make a grand tour of Europe. Later Bienvenida, who is childless, confides to Flor that Trujillo ‘is dying to have children and wants me to see a top Harley Street specialist about it’.

  When the date of Bienvenida’s departure dawns – and it dawns quite soon – Trujillo escorts her to the boat. He embraces her fondly in farewell, pressing the usual package of $100 bills into her hand. For three days following, Flor and Rubi are not required for lunch at the mansion. A team of workmen has been brought in to redecorate the private quarters. The whole place is in disarray for at the same time all the servants have been let go and a new staff installed in their place.

  When the work is done and the mansion sparkling with fresh paint and smelling of polish and beeswax, Maria Martinez moves in with her son Ramfis, plus baggage and a ton of personal effects. She’d been a stenographer at the National Palace when Trujillo’s eye first lit upon her and he picked her as a mistress. When she became pregnant he suggested an abortion, but she refused. So instead he married her off to a Cuban in the Dominican army and shipped them both to Havana. Against his wishes, she returned to the republic to give birth
to Rafael Jnr. Flor considers that she’s been smart in the way she played her hand. ‘Little Ramfis was the trump she used to ensnare Trujillo.’

  A new mistress-in-residence makes no difference to the country but domestic regime change is immediately apparent at the mansion. Maria is no plain submissive Dominicana like Bienvenida or Flor’s mother, but a beautiful imperious woman of Spanish temperament who dares to talk back to Trujillo. She makes her presence felt, and for Flor the inevitable problems with a new stepmother are exacerbated by the fact that Maria is almost the same age as herself.

  Flor and Rubi’s residence has no privacy; not even a fence divides it from the mansion’s grounds. Trujillo is an early riser and has the habit of strolling in on them when the whim takes him. One morning he drops by casually to say that he’s going to marry Maria. Overcoming her dismay, Flor attempts to appear delighted by the news. ‘What was there to say? I was upset by the things father did but I accepted him as a natural law unto himself, a man who could do what he willed with his life, mine or anybody else’s… And so I went to father’s civil marriage to Maria.’ Everyone who’s invited attends the ceremony. Not to would be an unforgivable affront. All are keen to express their joy in the Benefactor’s union; the provincial aristocracy and the brash new order in their vulgar finery are as one. Costumed as for comic opera they make up a motley throng, but the strangest member of that wedding party is Ramfis, now six and a full colonel in the army, wearing dress uniform, sword and medals, drinking champagne and chatting with his ADC.